Policing Cybercrime

The purpose of Policing Cybercrime and Cyberterror is to provide an in-depth discussion of the perceptions and responses of U.S. law enforcement agencies at all levels in dealing with cybercrime and cyberterror. The themes for this book include the challenges that cybercrime and digital evidence handling pose for local and state agencies, the jurisdictional and investigative hurdles that hinder the response capabilities of police agencies, and the complexities of the actual investigation of these offenses and their impact on officers. This text analyzes data collected from local law enforcement agencies in the U.S., in order to understand officer perceptions of and responses to cybercrime and cyberterrorism, along with samples from digital forensic examiners, to understand their stress, satisfaction, secondary trauma, and coping mechanisms in response to work experiences. The findings demonstrate the realities of policing cybercrimes and those involving digital evidence processing relative to traditional offenses. Policing Cybercrime and Cyberterror addresses a gap in the policing literature by examining the various technological and policy changes needed to increase the investigative response of police agencies, along with various internal policies to improve support for forensic investigators. PowerPoint slides are available upon adoption. Sample slides from the full 53-slide presentation are available to view here. Email [email protected] for more information. "Policing Cybercrime and Cyberterror is a must-read for anyone who is interested in cybercrime or pursuing a career in cybercrime investigation. The authors do an excellent job of providing readers with the latest trends in cybercrime research while also presenting new findings in this area. I strongly recommend this book!" -- Robert M. Worley, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Lamar University "...a timely addition to the study of policing and criminal activity on a number of counts. [The book] makes a valuable contribution to the study of policing in general, but in particular in understanding of the operational culture of cybercrime investigators. This is important as increasingly policing includes the monitoring of electronic communications and Internet sources." -- David Lowe, Criminal Justice Review 41(2)

Cybercrime has recently experienced an ascending position in national security agendas world-wide. It has become part of the National Security Strategies of a growing number of countries, becoming a Tier One threat, above organised crime and fraud generally. Furthermore, new techno-social developments in social network media suggest that cyber-threats will continue to increase. This collection addresses the recent 'inertia' in both critical thinking and the empirical study of cybercrime and policing by adding to the literature seven interdisciplinary and critical chapters on various issues relating to the new generation of cybercrimes currently being experienced. The chapters illustrate that cybercrimes are changing in two significant ways that are asymmetrical. On the one hand cybercrime is becoming increasingly professionalised, resulting in ’specialists’ that perform complex and sophisticated attacks on computer systems and human users. On the other, the ‘hyper-connectivity’ brought about by the exponential growth in social media users has opened up opportunities to ‘non-specialist’ citizens to organise and communicate in ways that facilitate crimes on and offline. While largely distinct, these developments pose equally contrasting challenges for policing which this book addresses. This book was originally published as a special issue of Policing and Society.

By its very nature digital crime may present a number of specific detection and investigative challenges. The use of steganography to hide child abuse images for example, can pose the kind of technical and legislative problems inconceivable just two decades ago. The volatile nature of much digital evidence can also pose problems, particularly in terms of the actions of the 'first officer on the scene'. There are also concerns over the depth of understanding that 'generic' police investigators may have concerning the possible value (or even existence) of digitally based evidence. Furthermore, although it is perhaps a cliché to claim that digital crime (and cybercrime in particular) respects no national boundaries, it is certainly the case that a significant proportion of investigations are likely to involve multinational cooperation, with all the complexities that follow from this. This groundbreaking volume offers a theoretical perspective on the policing of digital crime in the western world. Using numerous case-study examples to illustrate the theoretical material introduced this volume examine the organisational context for policing digital crime as well as crime prevention and detection. This work is a must-read for all academics, police practitioners and investigators working in the field of digital crime.

"National security increasingly depends on computer security. Cybercrime is written by the leading academic experts and government officials who team together to present a state-of-the-art vision for how to detect and prevent digital crime, creating the blueprint for how to police the dangerous back alleys of the global Internet."--Peter P. Swire, C. William O'Neill Professor of Law, the Ohio State University, and former Chief Counselor for Privacy, U.S. Office of Management & Budget.The Internet has dramatically altered the landscape of crime and national security, creating new threats, such as identity theft, computer viruses, and cyberattacks. Moreover, because cybercrimes are not often limited to a single site or national border, crime scenes themselves have changed. Consequently, law enforcement itself must confront these new dangers and embrace novel methods of prevention, as well as produce new tools for digital surveillance - which can jeopardize privacy and civil liberties.Cybercrime brings together leading experts in law, criminal justice, and security studies to describe crime prevention and security protection in the electronic age. Ranging from new government requirements that facilitate spying to new methods of digital proof, the book is essential to understand how criminal law-and even crime itself-have been transformed in our networked world.

This book is about the human factor in cybercrime: its offenders, victims and parties involved in tackling cybercrime. It takes a diverse international perspective of the response to and prevention of cybercrime by seeking to understand not just the technological, but the human decision-making involved. This edited volume represents the state of the art of research on the human factor in cybercrime, addressing its victims, offenders, and policing. It originated at the Second annual Conference on the Human Factor in Cybercrime, held in The Netherlands in October 2019, bringing together empirical research from a variety of disciplines, and theoretical and methodological approaches. This volume will be of particular interest to researchers and students in cybercrime and the psychology of cybercrime, as well as policy makers and law enforcement interested in prevention and detection.

Explaining cybercrime in a highly networked world, this book provides a comprehensive yet accessible summary of the history, modern developments, and efforts to combat cybercrime in various forms at all levels of government—international, national, state, and local. As the exponential growth of the Internet has made the exchange and storage of information quick and inexpensive, the incidence of cyber-enabled criminal activity—from copyright infringement to phishing to online pornography—has also exploded. These crimes, both old and new, are posing challenges for law enforcement and legislators alike. What efforts—if any—could deter cybercrime in the highly networked and extremely fast-moving modern world? Introduction to Cybercrime: Computer Crimes, Laws, and Policing in the 21st Century seeks to address this tough question and enables readers to better contextualize the place of cybercrime in the current landscape. This textbook documents how a significant side effect of the positive growth of technology has been a proliferation of computer-facilitated crime, explaining how computers have become the preferred tools used to commit crimes, both domestically and internationally, and have the potential to seriously harm people and property alike. The chapters discuss different types of cybercrimes—including new offenses unique to the Internet—and their widespread impacts. Readers will learn about the governmental responses worldwide that attempt to alleviate or prevent cybercrimes and gain a solid understanding of the issues surrounding cybercrime in today's society as well as the long- and short-term impacts of cybercrime.

Cybercrime is a complex and ever-changing phenomenon. This book offers a clear and engaging introduction to this fascinating subject by situating it in the wider context of social, political, cultural and economic change. Taking into account recent developments in social networking and mobile communications, this new edition tackles a range of themes spanning criminology, sociology, law, politics and cultural studies, including: - computer hacking - cyber-terrorism - piracy and intellectual property theft - financial fraud and identity theft - hate speech - internet pornography - online stalking - policing the internet - surveillance and censorship Complete with useful recommendations for further reading, incisive discussion questions and an updated glossary of key terms, Cybercrime and Society is an essential resource for all students and academics interested in cybercrime and the future of the Internet.